"I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes (harmonies) that were being used all the time. ... I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive."-- Charlie Parker on his personal stylistic breakthrough, quoted in: Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro, ed., Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955)

"I don't care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would never have written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker would have never played anything but swing music."-- Charlie Parker